JD Wetherspoon, the pubs chain, will be hit with £60 million in additional costs from next month, following the Chancellor’s increases in national insurance contributions and minimum wages.

The company said this amounts to £1,500 a week for every pub in the group.

“Since labour costs are around 35% of the pub industry’s sales, compared to around 11% for supermarkets, increases of this nature inevitably have a disproportionate impact on pubs, exacerbating the already-wide price differential for customers between the on and off-trade,” said chairman Tim Martin.

“The combination of much higher VAT rates for pubs than supermarkets, combined with increased labour costs will weigh heavily on the pub industry.

Despite the increases he said: “The company currently anticipates a reasonable outcome for the financial year, subject to our future sales performance.”

Like-for-like sales before separately disclosed items in the half year to 26 January were 4.8% higher, while profit before tax was down 8.6%.

In the last seven weeks, to 16 March, like-for-like sales increased by 5.0%.